ROGUE ONE editor John Gilroy: "A lot of the movie changed"

John Gilroy is an enigma, he edited both Suicide Squad and Nightcrawler. Nightcrawler is one of the most beautifully edited films of the decade, reminiscent of the gritty work of editors in the 1970s. Suicide Squad is one of the most poorly edited films I have seen. Does it have to do with lousy the material he had to work with?We all know that reshoots happened with "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" We also know that Gareth Edwards got pushed aside to make way for screenwriter Tony Gilroy, who got payed more than $5 Million for them. You don't get payed that much for just rewrites. Make no mistake about it, he was part of the film-making process. John Gilroy spoke to UK's The Independent in one of the most insightful interviews yet about what happened.

Full interview can be found HERE, but here are the most interesting sections:How did editing Gareth’s footage compare to working on other films? He’s very hand on, apparently.
I was given some free range to do things. I came on and helped shape a few things, to try some things, and I did. We had re-shoots. In terms of being hands-on, I would say it was about normal for directors.
You mentioned re-shoots. How much input did you have with those? I came on a little bit later than the other two editors. When I came on, there was a plan, so we did some photography. I was very much set on the movie that you see. There have been other incarnations of the movie, with different scenes that were not used, but I didn’t think about them that much. I was thinking about the movie that we had to make. In some of the trailers, there’s some very different footage. They were trying different things, obviously, as they went along. There was one where Jyn was holding the Death Star plans and running through what looks like a London tube. Was there another ending in sight at the beginning? [SPOILERS] 13 scenes from Rogue One's trailers cut from the film
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I would say a lot of the movie changed. That’s the simplest way to put it. I’ve said we definitely changed things at the beginning, added scenes developing those characters, and that has a ripple effect through the whole movie. So, I know people have been watching and clocking the deleted scenes and saying ‘I wonder how that fit in?’ but I was mostly concerned with the movie you saw. I was there to put that movie together. In a previous interview, I believe someone said there was a rough cut of Rogue One made using other films. Colin said that. He saw everything at every stage of this journey. And that happens - I’ve been on films where you make a pacemaker. Taking scraps of other films and making a sketch with other films, It’s not unheard of at an early stage of a film.It’s interesting that both those films had a lot of talk of re-shoots and deleted scenes from the trailers.A lot of things happened on Suicide Squadtoo. I’m not going to go into all that, but sometimes on these very big features, there’s a lot at stake. And when there’s a lot at stake, you need to get it right. Filmmakers need to feel they’re getting it right. So, people sometimes change their mind. People add different ideas and I guess you can say that about both these films. Because these trailers are sent out so far beforehand, does the reaction to them change the way you edit the film? Or are you completely oblivious to them, ignoring the reaction from fans at places like Comic-Con?I ignore it. A trailer or a comic-con piece is a totally different thing to what we’re really doing. But, it’s really nice to clock. What the early trailers on Suicide Squad did was show Warner Bros. people are very interested in the movie and the series. I’d say those short form things are an art in and of themselves. That’s a whole other thing. I don’t normally think about it too much and there’s not a lot of interface between the two disciplines.